Inositol, also known as cyclohexanehexol, is a member of water-soluble vitamin B family. Inositol is an essential substance for the growth of human, animal and microbial and it is widely used in medicine, food, feed and other industries. The current global demand is about 5,000 tons per year. Because of the current high price of inositol, inositol market prospect has not been fully developed. For example, global feed production in 2013 was 960 million tons, if 0.2-0.5% of inositol was added, the amount of inositol required by feed industry should reach 190-480 million tons per year. In this case, the current domestic and even the world's production are far from meeting the demand.
At present, the traditional production method of inositol is mainly through the acid hydrolysis of phytic acid (inositol hexaphosphate) under high temperature and high pressure. This process has strict requirements for equipment, huge one-time investment, and the operating pressure can only be controlled within a certain range, limiting the utilization of raw materials; The separation process of inositol from raw product is complex, resulting in high loss of product, and relatively high production cost. Also, the process will produce a large amount of phosphate pollutants, causing serious pollution to water source and environment. In recent years, in order to reduce energy consumption and pollution, hydrolysis method under atmospheric pressure is developed. At present, the hot spots of inositol production are chemical synthesis and microbial enzymatic fermentation. However, these methods suffer the same problems of high cost and low yield of product.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a new method with low-cost, low pollution and high yield for inositol production.